


Watching Mountains Flow

by Kizmet



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: BAMF Aziraphale (Good Omens), Gen, Hurt Crowley, Hurt/Comfort, Jerk Gabriel (Good Omens), M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Protective Everyone, Snake Crowley (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-05-28 19:07:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19400509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kizmet/pseuds/Kizmet
Summary: Judges 5:5 "The mountains flowed before the Lord"-From The Song of the Prophetess DeborahThe Deborah Number is a dimensionless number used in Rheology which characterizes how long it takes for something to flow.  It’s a rare example of scientists getting the joke.Crowley is left comatosed by an encounter with an amateur exorcist.  Aziraphale is willing to wait as long as it takes for him to recover.  Their human acquaintances worry, and not just about Crowley.





	1. Disaster

The sudden feel of being pulled away from a busy afternoon of threatening his house plants was the last thing Crowley expected or wanted, still he had no choice but to go. Demons, as a general rule, weren’t creative but it didn’t take much in the way of thinking to realize that humans who wanted to summon demons were never up to anything good and it was in Down Below’s interest to answer when they called and to not make it difficult to accomplish, the most Crowley could do to discourage it was Monkey-Paw type tricks or otherwise turning on the summoner. As a result, Crowley was very fond of the age of reason and humans deciding not to believe in rubbish like that anymore as it cut down on incidents wonderfully. _‘Why couldn’t Down Below have listened when I told them active field agents should be exempt from summoning, just in case we were in the middle of something delicate?’_ Crowley sulked as he felt himself pulled away by the occult energies. _‘I don’t even work for them any more, I should certainly be exempt.’_ But the Summons apparently didn’t care about Apocalypses that weren’t, Crowley’s role in them or Below’s tacit decision to ignore Crowley’s existence.

 _‘They’re going to want me to do something horrible, something I’d have never thought of in ten thousand years. Then they’ll want to BLAME me for it,’_ Crowley thought, setting himself to see the loopholes in whatever mess he was being dragged into. One of the many advantages of the Arrangement was the ability to give Aziraphale a heads up in the thwarting department if all else failed. The last thing Crowley was expecting was to material on consecrated ground. He yelped in shock as much as pain, feeling as if he was standing on live coals-

Not actually. Crowley could have walked across lava without scorching his shoes. Coals weren’t a problem for him, just churches.

“What sort of idiot summons a demon into a church!” he demanded irritably. Not just a church, he realized, a dry batismal font. Grey concrete, dim lighting in an infrequently used corner of a church basement, large enough for full immersion of an adult. The crack in the concrete held lingering traces of Holy Water, nowhere near enough to be fatal to a demon but the moisture in the dank basement wasn’t just water and it added another layer to the discomfort Crowley felt at being in a church.

“Don’t worry, I’m going to help you,” a young woman said stepping out of the shadows.

Crowley frowned in confusion, “I know you… You’re, the coffee shop? No, the Garden Shop- You work the register at the Garden Shop out on Winders Road. What in the name of… Somebody… are you doing summoning demons?!”

“It’s not like I’m summoning some random demon,” the girl replied with the slightest hint of hurt in her voice. “I’m summoning YOU.”

“And aren’t I the lucky one?” Crowley said, sarcasm so thick it was almost visibly dripping from his tongue.

The girl missed it entirely, she nodded eagar. “I’ve been watching you for ever so long,” she said. Four months technically, but that was a week longer than her longest lasting ‘love of her life’, and thus practically forever. They say time is relative, but time as measured by a teenage girl has absolutely no relationship to time as measured by an immortal demon.

“You’re not evil,” she continued a determined light that made Crowley’s skin crawl entering her eyes. “I’m going to help you.” Crowley had seen plenty of humans with Ideas, he had checked out the Spanish Inquisition after the commendation had arrived to name one case- There’d been more than a few Inquisitioners who would have earnestly sworn that they only wanted to help the witches they’d discovered… Even while standing a few feet from the pyre where the ‘lucky’ witch they were helping went up in flames. -And thus Crowley had an imminently sensible feeling of dread at the thought of becoming the subject of such an Idea. Unfortunately his florist didn’t seem to much care about what Crowley thought of her help. _‘But then what else is new?’_

“Now if I did everything properly, you should have to do what I say,” the girl continued cheerfully.

Dolefully Crowley refused to confirm that she had… Not unless she asked him directly and then he’d have no choice.

“Don’t worry, I won’t ask you to do anything bad,” the girl assured him. “I just need you to stay there and- oh don’t make any noise. The new Pastor’s a modern sort and no one really liked getting soaked while they got baptized anyway so he just sprinkles water on people these days. Everyone but me has practically forgotten this thing’s even here. As long as you stay quiet and still, like I told you, no one will ever find you.”


	2. Searching

It took Aziraphale two weeks to really notice that Crowley was missing and another three to seriously become worried. It really wasn’t that long, in the past they’d gone centuries without crossing paths. It had only been in the past nineteen years, since Adam’s birth and the beginning of their conspiracy to prevent the Apocalypse that an absence of little more than a month could be considered an absence let alone something to worry over. 

Aziraphale told himself that he was being ridiculous the whole way over to Crowley’s flat. He told himself that Crowley would tease him mercilessly for using a miracle for something illegal as he broke into Crowley’s flat. He couldn’t think of anything comforting to tell himself as he stood in Crowley’s sunroom surrounded by dozens of wilted, violently trembling plants. 

“Oh you poor things,” Aziraphale said as he fetched the watering can. “No, no I’m sure he’ll forgive you for wilting in this case. After all, there’s only so much you can do without any water, my dears. You’ll see as soon as we get him home, he won’t hold you responsible.”

He found Crowley’s phone laying abandoned on the stylish torture device masquaring as a couch in the living room- There were a number of reasons why, when the two of them ended up not calling it an evening, they gravitated towards the backroom of Aziraphale’s bookstore rather than Crowley’s flat. Crowley’s preference of style over function when it came to his living room was one of the larger ones. 

Upon seeing the phone Aziraphale all but pounced upon it. -After the Apocalypse-that-wasn’t and the end of any pretense of being on different sides Crowley had taken it upon himself to bring Aziraphale into the twenty-first century, technologically speaking.- The call log showed several unanswered calls from Aziraphale himself. He listened to five ranting message from Shadwell.- 

Shadwell had taken it upon himself to call both Crowley and Aziraphale weekly. Since the old Witchfinder had started having dinner WITH Madam Tracy rather her leaving his dinner outside his door he’d found it somewhat less comfortable to call her a Jezebel or any of the other names he’d routinely shouted at her… Only that quickly led to the discovery that he quite missed ranting at someone, hence his weekly calls to both angel and demon. Crowley had arranged for all calls from Shadwell to go straight to voicemail so he could take delight in delete them without listening to them. Aziraphale hadn’t given in to the temptation to screen his calls just yet. “Bless you, Sargent,” Aziraphale murmured as he counted the calls and thus established a timeline for Crowley’s disappearance.

Then Aziraphale turned to Crowley’s contact list. For the first few months following the Almost-Apocalypse everyone’s memories of the event had been clouded but Adam wasn’t used to keeping secrets from his friends and gradually the memories had seeped back in for all who been directly involved and, eventually, talking ensued. Afterwards Crowley had carefully collected everyone’s contact information and then cheerfully added them to a half dozen call lists to because he had an image to maintain even if he wasn’t associated with Hell any longer.

Aziraphale scrolled to the ‘A’s and there his finger hovered indecisively between Adam and Anathema for several moments before he selected Anathema- Everyone was pretending as hard as they could that Adam was just a normal young man these days who didn’t have the power to rearrange the world on a whim anymore, it wasn’t true but they liked thinking it. 

“Mr. Crowley, hello?” Anathema answered just before the call would have gone to voicemail. In the background Aziraphale heard Newt whisper, “Why is _he_ calling you? What does he want?” Muffled, as if she’d put her hand over the microphone Anathema whispered back, “Give it a moment and maybe he’ll say.”

“Er, it’s Aziraphale. I’m just using Crowley’s phone, I didn’t keep track of your number,” the angel admitted with a faint feeling of embarrassment. “Crowley wouldn’t happen to be there with you would he?” he asked hopefully. “He seems to have left his phone behind… For about five weeks.” Aziraphale was finding it surprisingly difficult to just out and ask for help locating the missing demon and hoped Anathema would read between the lines and figure out what he really wanted for herself.

“Is that unusual?” Anathema asked.

“Not so much in the past but at the moment I rather feel that it is,” Aziraphale said. “He hasn’t been watering his plants.”

“Are you sure he isn’t just testing them, weeding out the weak?” Anathema asked. 

“No, Crowley is quite conscientious about their care,” Aziraphale insisted. “He just doesn’t want them thinking he’s nice, not in the modern sense of the word.”

“I’m sorry,” Anathema said, “I haven’t seen him in several months, not since Adam’s graduation.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, disappointed. 

“I could try scrying for him,” Anathema offered guiltily.

“Thank you,” Aziraphale breathed. 

After Anathema had hung up Aziraphale remembered that Madem Tracy was less a fake medium than she liked to present herself as. He checked Crowley’s contact list again and sure enough there she was. 

Madam Tracy, who hadn’t spent almost the entirety of her life following the instructions of a seventeenth century witch, was much quicker on the uptake than Anathema had been. “No, I haven’t seen him… Or been possessed by him,” she said sympathetically. “But if you could bring by something of his I’ll see what I can do. And why don’t we put Mr. Shadwell on the case, I know Mr. Crowley isn’t a witch but close enough for the finding. And given how it’s worrying you, I think he would be agreeable to calling young Newt back to active duty. Don’t you worry deary, we’ll find your missing demon smartly.”

“It might be best if you came here, to the Mayfair flat,” Aziraphale said hesitantly. “Other than the Bentley I think the flat as a whole is the sort of thing you’d need. I wouldn’t dare drive the Bentley and-” Aziraphale faltered for a moment. “There’s a feel about the flat,” he said quietly. “I- I should be able to sense something more. If I just… Let myself.” 

Aziraphale wanted, desperately, to find Crowley but if the demon had died, or worse had been destroyed in that flat he didn’t know that he wanted to know. And so when he’d sensed something upon entering the flat without thinking he’d strengthened his mental walls, reassured and cared for Crowley’s neglected plants and reached out to their human friends and he hadn’t tried to pin down the source of disquiet that filled him upon entering the flat. 

“I’ll be right by,” Madam Tracy said reassuringly. “We can look into it together.”

While he waited, Aziraphale offered Crowley’s plants a little more water and tried to reassure them but only passed on his own anxiety. 

Madam Tracy arrived with Shadwell trailing after her muttering something about dens of iniquity. “Shall we?” Madam Tracy asked. Aziraphale nodded, he took a deep breath, forced his walls down and reached. 

“So aren’t you going to do something… Um… dancing naked or some such?” Shadwell asked.

Madam Tracy smirked, “Disappointed are you?” she replied. “No, sometimes when someone asks for a medium all they really want is a bit of reassurance, or in this case, a friend. Mr. Fell’s ever so much better at this than I could ever be, particularly when it comes to sensing our Mr. Crowley. I do hope nothing has happened to him. You’ll have to give him a right good talking to about worrying us all like this?”

Shadwell nodded. Mentally he started adding a bit about worrying folks who cared about him to his normal rant about Crowley being a vile tempter and such. 

For several long minutes Aziraphale wandered around the flat with a distant expression in his eyes then he came back to himself with a sigh of relief. “Crowley has been summoned,” he relaid. “A thoroughly unpleasant business but nowhere near what I feared… Still, even if he had everything in hand he could have called.”

“Standard practice for this sort of thing,” Shadwell said knowingly.

“Certainly not,” Aziraphale said. “Last time he dropped me a telegram.”

While Aziraphale insisted that a summoning was nothing to worry about, nothing Crowley couldn’t handle it was painfully obvious that he was worried. Especially as another week passed without word from Crowley. Anathema and Madam Tracy both reached out to their colleagues in the occult to see if anyone had run into someone wanting information on summoning demons. Anathema added how none of her bunch would have actually given out such a thing but they could generally tell when someone was determined enough to find it some other way. Aziraphale didn’t doubt her; the rituals were all rubbish made up by humans who felt there should be a certain style to things, all that was really required was sufficient Belief and Will.

As Madam Tracy and Anthema worked their contacts Aziraphale considered the possibility that Crowley could have been summoned anywhere in the world. He weighed the options of miracling up money for plane tickets or simply bringing out his wings and flying to wherever Crowley had been taken, considering which option would draw less of the wrong sort of attention… And then he arranged the sale of a number of his books to build a travel fund that would pass completely unnoticed by both Heaven and Hell. It turned out to have been an unneeded sacrifice as Anathema’s search led them to a small garden shop in Battersea just twenty minutes from Crowley’s flat. 

“Ah knows how ta interrogate a witch,” Shadwell declared and stomped out of the Mayfair flat, which had become something of a central headquarters in their efforts to find Crowley.

“Er- I think I’ll go along… In case he gets too enthusiastic,” Newt added. “Also the car.”

Aziraphale didn’t say he was coming too, he just followed Newt down the stairs. Shadwell was already sitting in Dick Turpin’s passenger seat tapping his foot impatiently as Newt and Aziraphale piled in. “You stay quiet,” Shadwell ordered glaring at Aziraphale. “We won’t be needing any of your _pleasantries_ doing an interrogation.” 

“No,” Aziraphale agreed softly. 

At the shop Shadwell charged in, Aziraphale and Newt following in his wake. “Sophie Walker, you stand accused of witchcraft!” Shadwell exclaimed brandishing his pin.

The unassumingly pretty young woman working the register jumped up in alarm sending her stool clattering over. 

Shadwell homed in on her like a bloodhound. “Missy, you’ve been consorting with demons! Demons that want nothing to do with you!” he accused. “Now we’ll have to see about how many-” 

Newt clapped a hand over Shadwell’s mouth before their interrogation ended with them arrested for sexual harassment. “Antony J. Crowley went missing nine weeks ago,” Newt said sternly. “And we know you were involved. Bringing in the police wouldn’t be our first choice” -Or their fiftieth but Newt didn’t see any reason to tell Sophie Walker that part- “But you will tell us exactly what you did… And don’t worry about us not believing you if something weird happened.” 

“I was only trying to help him!” Sophie protested loudly. “Anyone who loves plants the way he does can’t be evil!”

_‘Clearly she’s never heard Crowley talking to his plants,’_ Newt thought. 

“So it had to be some sort of possession; his eyes, they were-” she shuddered. “But he was fighting it, I just wanted to help!”

“What did you do?” Aziraphale asked. There was something bubbling up in the gentle angel’s voice that left Newt and Shadwell unconsciously edging away from him. 

“Only he turned into a great monstrous snake and I- I just couldn’t!” 

“WHERE IS CROWLEY?” Aziraphale demanded, the promise of a smiting underlining his words.

The girl burst into hysterical tears. “The church, the basement.”

“Which church?” Newt asked. He glanced at Aziraphale, then quickly looked away. “Maybe give us a little room?” he suggested. Shadwell nodded, then steeled himself and grabbed Aziraphale’s sleeve to tug him out of the shop. Five minutes later Newt came out with an address and a soaked through shoulder. 

The drive to the church was made in tense silence. This time it was Aziraphale who swept the other two in his wake as he charged in. He marched up the aisle between the pews and quickly located a stair going down near the pastor’s office. 

The basement was as dimly lit as Aziraphale’s bookshop, stuffed full of various things: broken pews, stacks of hymnals, chests of costumes for the Christmas pageant, decorations left behind from generations of weddings that might possibly come in useful someday… And along one wall a concrete cistern, rough four times the size of a casket with stairs leading up to the rim, covered with a row boards to keep anyone careless enough to play on it from falling in, the boards were the only surface in the room not thick with dust. 

Aziraphale ran, knocking over a rack of choir gowns in his hurry to reach the cistern. He tossed the boards across the room revealing the cavity beneath, the summoning circle painted onto the concrete and the horribly burned snake lying still and silent in the center of the circle. 

“Crowley?” Aziraphale called. With shaking hands he ripped open a can of paint left nearby and spilled it across the circle. He was relatively sure that the girl’s Belief in her circle had been broken back in the shop but it never hurt to be sure. “Crowley?” he repeated. He knelt beside the snake and lifted it’s head, shuddering at the sight of white, scared over eyes. “It’s Aziraphale. You’re safe now.” 

“That’s him then?” Shadwell asked uncomfortably. 

Aziraphale nodded absently. There was a terrifying lack of Crowley in the snake. Aziraphale reached out with his aura. He felt like he was standing above a pitch black pool. Then Aziraphale dove in. “CROWLEY!!!” he shouted plunging through endless blackness, searching for some trace of his friend.

Newt and Shadwell drove for the floor to avoid the radiant white wings that were suddenly filling the basement.

“Oh, there you are,” Aziraphale breathed. In the blackness surrounding him he spotted a tiny gold spark clinging to life, it was just the shade of Crowley’s eyes. Aziraphale cradle the spark in his hands as he turned back in the direction from which he’d come but try as he might Aziraphale couldn’t draw that little spark back to the surface with him.

“Does that seem like a good sign?” Newt asked Shadwell when Aziraphale’s wings fold themselves up along the angel’s back then vanished. Aziraphale remained crouched in front of the snake holding up its head to stare intently into its burnt-out eyes. 

“Bugger if I know Laddie,” Shadwell said.

Newt glanced around awkwardly for something useful to do. “Maybe we shouldn’t just pick it- him up,” he ventured. “There’s a lot of burns.” 

Shadwell shrugged. He’d come. He’d interrogated the witch. He more or less felt he’d done his bit and didn’t share Newt’s guilt at standing around waiting for the angel to be done with whatever it was he was doing. 

Giving up on Shadwell, Newt scoured the basement himself and eventually found a basket large enough to fit a three meter long python. 

After a long while Aziraphale came out of the trace he’d fallen into. He blinked hard several times to clear his eyes of Crowley’s internal landscape before he was able to focus on the world around him. 

“Crowley?” Aziraphale called softly, hoping to see the demon shift back to his human form or give some indication of awareness. “Most likely he just needs a bit more time to recover,” he insisted when nothing happened. “Did you know he slept for an entire century once?”

Newt held up the basket with the air of a puppy offering up a somewhat sobered on newspaper. “I thought we could use this to carry him.”

“That seems a very good thought,” Aziraphale praised him distractedly. 

The Crowley didn’t so much as twitch as they coiled his snake form up in the basket and carried it out to the Wasabi.


	3. Dejection

A ringing phone woke Pepper at the ungodly hour, for a university student, of ten o’clock. “Hullo?” she said with a yawn. 

“Ms. Pepper, my dear, I hate to bother you but I really couldn’t think of anyone else to call. When I checked on Crowley this morning he looked dreadful; all his scales, even between the burns, overnight they’d become this terrible, dull grey. I shouldn’t have, we can’t really afford any attention from either Above or Below but what else could I do? I tried to miracle him better… It didn’t work! I don’t know what to do now. A miracle didn’t work! But I remembered your studies and perhaps you know something about snakes? I just don’t know what else to do.”

“I’ll come right away,” Pepper said. “But I’m only a first year veterinary student.”

“I’m at my wit’s end,” Aziraphale said. “A miracle didn’t work.”

Pepper hung up and promptly called the rest of the Them. They met in front of Adam’s hall ten minutes later. Wensleydale had an armful of books on snakes and a few more on demons. Brian had a first aid kit and Pepper the number of her department’s herpetologist. Adam had a car, no one asked where it came from but since Aziraphale hadn’t picked his bookshop’s location for convenience and it was blocks from the nearest bus stop…

“Thank goodness you’re here!” Aziraphale said hustling Pepper into the back room with barely a glance at the other three.

Crowley was laying in a nest of blankets in the center of the room. “Oh! Oh!” Pepper exclaimed. “It’s okay, good even. He’s shedding his skin… But I think he needs help.”

Pepper and Aziraphale spent the rest of the day rubbing Crowley down with damp towels until his old scales came loose, then working the molt off him. Beneath the old skin, Crowley’s scales, between white scars, were an iridescent, the black, broken up by barely visible diamonds of darkest red.

“I think your miracle did help,” Pepper said, comparing the gaps in the shed skin to scars marring Crowley’s new scales.

As the foursome drove back to their school Pepper glanced sideways at Adam, “You can’t just… make him better?”

Adam frowned thoughtfully. “I think, back when I was eleven I would have but it’s not so easy at nineteen to just go and do things. Things, especially when things are really people, don’t seem so easy to fix anymore. I’m almost certain that I could order Crowley to wake up and he wouldn’t have any choice but to do it… Only should I?”

“Right, we don’t want any ‘Pet Cemetary’ or anything,” Brian said knowingly. He considered himself a bit of an expert, having watched every horror movie his parents would have never allowed in the house during his first term of living in the dorms at the University.

“Actually, it might be like that time Pepper insisted on finishing out her tennis match even though she’d ruptured a tendon,” Wensleydale added more prosaically. He turned to Pepper, “The doctor scolded you something terrible for that, said you could have done permanent damage.”

Adam nodded, “Both those things. And also… I guess, I worry- Aziraphale says he can sense Crowley’s still in his corporation but Anathema and Madam Tracy can’t sense anything at all and I don’t know… What if he’s not there? If I just- If I MADE him better I might make him into my notion of Crowley instead of Crowley… And… And that, it’d be terrible.”

Looks of agreement passed between the Them. The topic of Adam healing Crowley was quietly dropped. 

A month later the four of them helped Aziraphale move Crowley’s house plants from his Mayfair flat to the Soho bookshop. Walking through the door with the first few potted plants, Brain stumbled to a confused halt. “Did you wash the windows?” he asked.

“Well, plants need their sun I’ve read,” Aziraphale said with a faint trace of defensiveness. “And Crowley has always enjoyed a bit of basking in the sun.”

Brian glanced around and saw a basket sitting under the newly cleaned window holding a large black snake. “Has he woken up then?” Brian asked hopefully.

Aziraphale shook his head. “Not yet, his ordeal was quite exhausting it seems. But still, I thought he might enjoy a bit of sun. Even in his human form Crowley is inordinately fond lazing in the sun.” 

It took several trips in Adam’s car to get all of Crowley’s plants. Then Pepper noticed that the food in his refrigerator was going bad. “Well of course it’s going bad,” Brian said. “It’s not plugged in.”

“Actually, none of the appliances are plugged in,” Wensleydale observed. “I think it’s probably got more to do with Mr. Crowley’s injuries than the lack of electricity.” 

“Still needs to be cleaned out,” Pepper said. “Brian, I’ll do the emptying, you cart everything down to the bin.”

“We should put the Bentley in a garage too,” Adam said. “Wensley, you’re the best driver among us, you’d better take the car. I can take the last bunch of plants over on my own.”

After a place in the bookshop had been found for the last plant Adam found himself hovering about. “You’re alright then?” he asked Aziraphale.

The angel smiled, “Of course, dear child, we’re just fine. Crowley only needs a bit more time to get back to his old self,” he said and Adam immediately resolved to check in on the angel and demon frequently. 

The week before second semester started for the Them Aziraphale discovered that his shop suddenly had a basement full of second hand textbooks. He only felt a reflexive twinge of alarm when the Them and their friends from school began tromping through his shop and removing books- Only textbooks, University students on restricted budgets had very little interest in rare, first edition books of prophecy or bibles with misprints. As customers went, they were quite tolerable Aziraphale decided.

It didn’t take long for one of the students to notice the huge snake curled up in the weak winter sunshine by the front window.

“Cor, that’s amazing!” one girl exclaimed.

“Oh the poor thing’s hurt,” her friend noticed.

Aziraphale hurried over, resting a hand protectively on Crowley’s head but finding only amazement and sympathy in the girls he relaxed. “Yes, he’s had a rough time of it lately,” Aziraphale said. He sent a careful measure of energy to Crowley. 

Normally an angel or demon’s intrinsic energy was more than enough to sustain a corporation indefinitely, rendering basic human necessities like food or sleep superfluous, but Crowley was in such a weakened state that Aziraphale had taken over sustaining Crowley’s body to avoid taxing him. Aziraphale feared that discorporation would be more than merely inconvenient given Crowley’s injuries and their lack of standing with their former superiors.

“So he’s a rescue animal?” the first girl asked.

“More a sick friend,” Aziraphale replied.

The following year the textbooks had been relocated to the first floor of the shop while Aziraphale’s collection took their former spot in the basement. UV radiation was detrimental to the older books and the basement was difficult for customers to access, what with the steep, rickety stair largely hidden behind a number of potted plants. Aziraphale had no idea why humans were so uneasy around plants whose leaves shook even in still air but he’d noticed it was the case and had arranged a few of Crowley’s more nervous plants in strategic areas to discourage customers. 

By the following year, he’d also begun a small collection of tattered paperbacks near the textbooks. After a few semesters of listening to the students the Them directed towards his shop Aziraphale had concluded that the cost of new texts should have been a sin and he liked encouraging young people to read for pleasure. Some of the Literature students were delightful to talk with and the students who didn’t openly admire Crowley were terrified of him; Aziraphale knew his old friend was enjoying both reactions equally even if he never gave any sign of it.

“Well, he’s seeing people even if he’s barely gone out since we brought Mr. Crowley’s plants back here,” Wensleydale observed.

“It was a good idea,” Adam assured him. “I’m afraid we might lose both of them if Aziraphale completely buries himself in here.”

“Mr. Crowley is getting better,” Pepper said. “Every time he sheds his skin the new scales underneath are less damaged.”

“It’s been nearly two years!” Adam hissed. “And he hasn’t been awake even a moment. Aziraphale’s more-or-less constantly miracling his body to make it stay alive- Which is dangerous right there, what if Above notices and doesn’t like it? Which, of course they wouldn’t like it, they don’t like anything to do with Crowley or Aziraphale or them being friends or liking the Earth! We’ve lost Crowley ‘cause some crazy took it into her head that she could go around ‘fixing’ him. I’m not losing Aziraphale too!”

“Adam? Are you okay?” Brian asked tentatively. 

“You’re all human,” Adam said. “You’ll all grow old like everyone does and pass on together, you don’t have to think about it. Crowley was murdered and Aziraphale won’t even admit he’s dead because if he did he’d have to admit he’s all alone! There’s no one else like him without Crowley!”


	4. Trepidation

“Gabriel,” a timid messenger angel said. “Someone manifested fully on Earth, in front of humans… And they didn’t file the appropriate forms!”

Gabriel rolled his eyes, “Well, find out who it was. Sloth is a sin after all. Do I have to explain everything?”

There were multiple rounds of questioning but no one came forward to take responsibility for the unauthorized miracle despite several sternly worded memos. Eventually Uriel awkwardly suggested, “Er, has anyone considered that, well, angels don’t lie and everyone has said it wasn’t them-“

“If everyone says they didn’t do but it did happen then someone is lying,” Gabriel accused.

“No one asked Aziraphale,” Uriel said.

“Well, that settles it,” Michael declared. “Aziraphale did it, case closed.”

“We can’t just-“ Gabriel sputtered. “He blatantly ignored Heaven’s dictates.”

“You tried to immolate him in hellfire… And it didn’t work,” Sandalphon reminded Gabriel blandly. 

“We all agreed to collaborate with Hell to deal with both Aziraphale and that demon he consorts with,” Gabriel snapped. 

“After failing to destroy Aziraphale, shall we now scold him?” Sandalphon asked sarcastically.

“At the least we should know what he’s up to,” Gabriel insisted. 

The task of figuring out why Aziraphale had decided to pull out his wings and full power in front of at least one human was passed around like a hot potato. Anyone who had anyone they could pass it off to cheerfully did. 

Gabriel and the others involved in the failed execution had tried to hush it up but stories of the angel spitting hellfire at Gabriel had spread… widely. By the time someone was found with no convenient subordinate or good excuse several years had passed, the church basement had been cleaned out and remodeled to provide a room to host a teen-bible study group and the young woman who’d attempted to exorcise Crowley had switched to a different congregation. The investigation stalled again.

In a fit of frustration Gabriel finally descend to Earth and, after filling out all the proper forms, in triplicate, used a miracle to view Aziraphale’s unauthorized miracle. What he saw left him sputtering inarticulately.

* * *

“You were tricked, Beezlebub,” Gabriel informed the demon prince archly. “Crowley is not immune to Holy Water. He was all but destroyed by extended exposure to consecrated ground and _residual_ Holy Water engineered by some human child playing at being an exorcist.”

“If we were fooled, you were azzz well,” Beezlebub ground out.

It took a while to organize it; where Gabriel had to deal with rumors of Aziraphale breathing hellfire Beezlebub had to find demons willing to go up against Crowley after half of Hell had seen him splashing around in Holy Water. They’d seen proof that Holy Water was as effective against demons advertised and, from the reading of Crowley’s crimes, they all knew that he was willing to use it against them if challenged. It took no little time but eventually Beezlebub managed to convince a group of demons that she was scarier than the possibility of destruction by Holy Water and Gabriel browbeat a unit of angels into believing the rumors were ridiculous: An angel who could not only withstand but produce hellfire? Who hadn’t fallen? Heaven deciding to execute one of God’s angels instead of leaving it in Her hands? Clearly nonsense. 

And so a group of a half dozen angels led by Gabriel and another group of a half dozen demons led by Beezlebub appeared outside of Aziraphale’s bookshop in Soho… Sixteen years, four months and a day after Crowley’s rescue. “We’re not working with them,” Gabriel told his bunch quickly as he threw a dark look in the direction of the demons. “We all just happen to be here at the same time to deal with separate issues.” 

At the same time the demons were watching the angels and the bookshop suspiciously. “Why didn’t we grab Crowley when the angel was away?” one of them muttered.

“You think we didn’t consider that?” Hastur snapped. “Crowley never leaves and the one time the angel did, the Antichrist was there.” 

During the years that Above and Below had spent dithering, Aziraphale had expanded his bookshop by buying out his neighbor. The former “Intimate Books” also had a basement and Aziraphale quietly made sure the stairway was as much a safety hazard at the one to the sublevel of his shop before moving more of his books off the main level. He’d also- encouraged -the addition of a bus stop on the corner outside the store as the shop’s hours increased due to University students tendency to take advantage of NOT having parents about to enforce sensible bedtimes and Aziraphale worried about their safety coming and going from his shop. 

The students cheerfully made up stories about Mr. Fell’s tragic lost love and admired the huge snake that always seemed to be sleeping near him. The younger students found the atmosphere of the shop a balm to homesickness they wouldn’t admit to suffering. Those approaching graduation tended to discover that Mr. Fell had a way of soothing any fears that they might have about going out into the world. Graduates came back for nostalgia and the way that the shop made a person feel like it was possible, even encouraged, to sit down with someone distinctly not of your set and have a real conversation. Over the years the main floor’s layout had become open with clusters of chairs for people who wanted to talk about books to congregate comfortably. One such group, including Aziraphale himself, had formed that night as the definitely-not-combined force of angels and demons barged in. 

Aziraphale moved Crowley’s head off his lap and stood up, placing himself resolutely in front of the demon. “My dears, I believe I shall have to close up early tonight,” he told the students in a tone that brooked no argument. A darker expression filled his eyes as he added, “Your business WILL wait until they’ve gathered up their things,” to the assembled empyreal and infernal agents. 

Excuses about paperwork, bother and ‘Hadn’t there been some humans involved in that debacle of the Apocalypse failing to come off?’ -Actually, the various humans involved had done almost everything, with the possible exception of Crowley misplacing the Antichrist in the first place and even that could be argued was mostly the Nuns’ doing, although possibly if he’d supervised a bit more closely… But things would have turned out very different if he had so let’s not go there. In the end, Crowley and Aziraphale had mostly just been there, both of them _willing_ to stand at Adam’s side in defense of the Earth against the forces of both Heaven and Hell and that had really been all that was needed from them. The forces of Heaven and Hell didn’t like remembering it that way and so they assigned their wayward agents a larger role than that of moral support. -Such thoughts flitted through the minds of the various angels and demons so they stood there, frozen in a tense standoff with Aziraphale as his customers gathered up their things and left. 

“Jacob, could you please turn the sign on your way out?” Aziraphale asked the last straggler. 

“We could stay,” Jacob offered with a worried look at the beings who’d invaded the bookshop. They all glared menacingly back at him.

“I know,” Aziraphale said. “But I’d rather you didn’t.”

The door clicked shut behind him, with the last source of youthful enthusiasm gone from the shop the atmosphere began to shift. The pop of air being displaced by a solid object drew everyone’s eyes back to Aziraphale. The Principality stood in front of Crowley holding a sword, it wasn’t his original sword but he felt that it should be covered in flames and so it was. “I would like you to leave and not come back.” 

“There’s six of us and six of them and one of you,” Sandalphon pointed out feeling unaccountably nervous despite those facts. “What do you think you can do?” 

“I don’t know,” Aziraphale said honestly. “But I suppose we’ll find out.”

“You’d go against all of us for a demon!?” Gabriel demanded.

“For my friend,” Aziraphale corrected. 

The crowd opposing Aziraphale stirred uneasily. Several of the angels identified the aura of love permeating the shop: A safe place. A home to return to, waiting to welcome you for nothing more than being yourself. And rising from below they felt a deep, implacable anger at their violation of that carefully created space. The angels looked at the flaming sword and remembered rumors of Aziraphale wielding hellfire. 

The demons, knowing how vulnerable they all were to Holy Water, weren’t comfortable with the thought of facing an angel at all but were also throwing more than a few discomforted glances past Aziraphale to where Crowley lay. “I’m not risking my skin to claim vengeance against an empty husk,” Hastur announced then turned and walked out. The remaining demons glanced between Beezlebub and the door, wondering if they dared follow Hastur out.

Beezlebub took a step forward, staring intently at Crowley. Aziraphale leveled his sword threateningly. After a moment, Gabriel and Sandalphon’s focus also shifted from Aziraphale to Crowley. “Has he discorporated?” Gabriel asked when he discovered that he couldn’t sense anything from the snake.

“If he had, if he wazzz down Below, do you think I’d be here with you lot?” Beezlebub snapped. “The demon Crowley has expired,” she informed her followers then as she led them out of the bookshop he cast a quick glance over his shoulder at Gabriel, “The angel’s not our problem.”

Very few of the humans who found themselves drawn to Aziraphale’s bookshop by more than the existence of reasonably priced textbooks- Where, somehow, you could always find every text on your list even when the bookstore on campus was out and how did they have used copies of texts that had only just come into print? -Very few humans the sensitivity to realize that the air of welcome, of waiting that permeated the air wasn’t directed at them but was merely transcendental spill-over. The angels currently standing in Aziraphale’s shop were much more attuned to the metaphysical, they knew perfectly well that the love filling the space was NOT directed at them. The angels waited nervously for what Aziraphale would do now that the demons had left. Aziraphale did nothing more than switch to a more neutral stance as Beezlebub, the most open and direct threat to Crowley left. 

“Are you insane?” Gabriel exclaimed when it became obvious that their side would have to make the next move. “You really are ready to fight us all for that demon? And he’s dead! He is dead Aziraphale!”

“He just needs a little more time,” Aziraphale responded automatically. 

And beneath the love that didn’t encompass them, the angels felt a sense of waiting, of a breath held, of faith and hope that things would turn out so entwined as to be indistinguishable, of a readiness to wait forever if need be. The mix of emotions, so human but also clearly Aziraphale’s, left the angels more disquieted, quite frankly creeped out, than the flaming sword that probably wasn’t but still just might be hellfire. 

Slowly Gabriel’s expression morphed from discomfort to comprehension to a sneering sort of satisfaction. “You want us to leave, Aziraphale? Well, fine. We’ll leave,” he said stalking forward to look down his nose at the other angel, ignoring the sword altogether. “We’ll leave you and your precious demon all alone. Because it suddenly all makes sense to me: Loving him is its own punishment. He’s never going to wake up Aziraphale. Even if you refuse to believe it, no matter how much of your faith you put in him, instead of where it belongs, it won’t change that he’s _dead_.”

There was a sudden crack, and Gabriel stumbled back clutching his nose. Aziraphale stepped back, closer to Crowley as he spun his sword back to a guard position after having used the hilt to break the archangel’s nose. “Do excuse me, it must have slipped,” Aziraphale apologized without an ounce of sincerity. 

“Have fun tending your demon’s corpse,” Gabriel spat after healing nose. 

Aziraphale didn’t allow his sword to extinguish and vanish into the ether until long after the other angels had departed. Only when he was sure they were truly gone did he let himself slump to the floor. Gently he shifted Crowley’s head back into his lap. “They just don’t know you like I do, Dear Boy,” he said softly. “You’ll be right as rain, you just need a little more time.”


	5. Injustice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The book Amy Pulsifer is reading from is "Villains by Necessity" by Eve Forward.

When Aziraphale, Newt and Shadwell first rescued Crowley the snake-shaped demon was covered angry red burns from nose to tail. Within five years the burns had lighted to a cross-hatch of white scars, disrupting his dark scales so that they couldn’t lay right and claiming both his eyes. By the time ten years had passed Crowley’s scales were a healthy, glossy black broken with red diamonds so dark as to be almost invisible against the background of black which lightened to a deep red on his underbelly, the same shade as his hair in human form. By the time thirty years had passed his eyes were a soft, unfocused gold, as if they were healing beneath the scar tissue and Aziraphale trusted it would only be a few more sloughing of scales before all physical traces of Crowley’s ordeal had been erased. - But he didn’t awaken. 

While Aziraphale waited for Crowley’s recovery Anathema and Newt had a little girl, Shadwell passed away and Adam and his friends completed college. 

Wensleydale met a prim young lady during his junior year, married her after a three years of courtship and a year of work as an accountant in Tadfield. After his promotion they had their first child, a boy, and a girl two and a half years later. 

Pepper completed veterinary school with honors, she specialized in herpetology and set up a practice on the outskirts of London. She had a number of short-lived, passionate relationships; if she had a type it seemed to be that all of them had ‘causes’ and the thing that attracted her to them in the first place usually ended up being the very same thing that came between them. She adopted stray pets and stray people with equal regularity and there were always around a half dozen rescue animals and one or two kids who needed a place around her house. 

Brian took a year off from school to travel, came home with a wife and never bothered going back to school. He tried his hand at farming only to discover he was better at fixing his equipment than using it to grow things. When his neighbors noticed they began asking his help with their own equipment and in a few years Brian had sold off all of the farm except for the house and barn which he’d converted to a mechanic’s shop The oldest of his four girls appeared to share his knack and the two of them could often be found leaning over a motor together. 

Adam became a teacher at a boarding school. Shortly after he was hired the school began to be plagued with a steady stream of small mysteries and odd occurrences, nothing so dangerous as to alarm the parents but plenty to delight the students who felt like they might as well be living the novels Mr. Young taught about in his literature classes. For years Adam avoided becoming close to anyone for fear that they would grow old and he wouldn’t. He told himself looking after his students and the Them- even if his old friends didn’t really require much looking after- was enough for him and was caught completely off guard when he discovered he’d fallen in love with the Maths Professor. In spite of his fears Adam continued to age normally; Aziraphale, Anathema and Madam Tracy all resolved not to mention that it was because he was willing it so, just in case knowing changed something. Madam Tracy was a very active honorary grandmother to all of various children who popped into the lives of their exclusive little circle of ‘those who’d been at the almost-apocalypse’ until her death at the age of ninety-seven.

And time continued to pass. The children grew-up and went off to start lives of their own. Brain’s youngest and Wensleydale’s youngest married. One of Pepper’s fosters graduated law school. Anathema and her daughter had a dreadful falling out when Apricity declared that the Occult was a hoax useful for nothing more than swindling the gullible. She moved to Canada in a huff and returned six years later with a degree in Physics and a device that could measure paranormal energies… Which blew up every time she tried to measure Adam or Aziraphale. Generations of students from several different London Universities passed through Aziraphale’s Bookshop. He became something of a fixture in the University landscape and as such wasn’t expected to age thus no one was surprised when he didn’t.

It was a quiet afternoon at the bookshop over forty years after Crowley’s rescue. Aziraphale was trying to impose order on the paperback section before he settled in with one of his beloved obscure novels. Anathema’s granddaughter was leaning back against Crowley’s coils, reading out loud to him.

_“‘There’s more to people than some defined label,’ said Arcie. ‘There are more than straight good and evil, aye, even more than law or disorder or fence-sittin’. There’s prejudice, whimsey, affection, superstition, habit, upbringing, alliance, pride, society, morals, animosity, preference, values, religion, circumstance, humor, perversity, honor, vengeance, jealousy, frustration… hundreds o’ factors, from the past and in every present moment, as decides what some one person’ll do in an individious situation,’”_ the eight-year-old read in clear piping voice. 

Aziraphale vaguely remembered the book being about a group of villains setting out to save the world from a particularly oppressive and self-righteous brand of ‘good’. He wondered if it was just coincidence or if Amy Pulsifer was one of the young ones who believed the older generation’s stories. 

_“‘Sometimes there’s other reasons for helping, other than personal gain or benefit,’ added Sam softly. ‘Friendship, companionship, trust and love are not confined to light alone… They are harder won, fewer seen… But no less real’-”_ Amy broke off suddenly. “Uncle Zira? What’s wrong?”

“Whatever do you mean dear child?” Aziraphale asked.

“You’re crying,” Amy said.

Aziraphale reached up and touched his cheek. His fingers came away wet. “So I am,” he said in surprise. “It’s just a small leak. Nothing for you to worry about, dear one.” Aziraphale wasn’t terribly surprised when Anathema rang him later that night, he’d never been very good at disassembling. He wasn’t much more convincing during Anathema’s call and she drove over immediately after. 

“It would be alright if you’re not fine,” Anathema said cautiously. 

Aziraphale took a moment to brush his fingers across Crowley’s coils, transferring some of the energy that sustained their corporeal forms and hoping to receive a bit of inspiration in return. He tried to put together some sort of convincing lie but what came out of his mouth was, “I simply have no idea why I haven’t Fallen. I am so terribly angry with God.”

Anathema’s breath caught with a start.

Aziraphale stood up and walked into the backroom. 

Bewildered, Anathema followed him. 

“Thank you,” Aziraphale said. “I didn’t wish to have this conversation in front of Crowley, in case he can hear us.”

Anathema nodded.

“I don’t believe a deluded girl, infatuated with the idea of ‘fixing’ Crowley could have done so much harm if it wasn’t God’s will,” Aziraphale said. “And yes, I’m quite sure it all plays some role in the Ineffable Plan but I find that answer is no longer good enough. I am thoroughly sick of unknowable plans that are all for the best but seem to require an inordinate amount of suffering from Crowley.”

“It’s not just about the exorcism attempt is it?” Anathema asked.

“Why haven’t I Fallen?” Aziraphale repeated. “I cannot believe that Falling made Crowley a better being. What sort of evil demon asks what the children did to deserve being drowned in the Flood? Unless it was daring to voice, _to think_ , those questions that was his sin. In that case, I could reason that I did not Fall because I’ve been complacent; in six thousand years there is so much that I have accepted,” Aziraphale spat the word like that it was a curse. “Because it was God’s will.”

“Perhaps it is rather terrible that it was this, wondering why my friend was made to suffer when I was not, that was too much for me. I wasn’t angry as we all marched toward Apocalypse, I was willing to allow Crowley to persuade me. I was ready to argue, to believe that Crowley, that a demon, had been led to the truth of the Ineffable Plan when all my fellow angels had gone astray. I still believe that averting the Apocalypse was in accordance with God’s Plan.”

“Just the fact that Agnes’ second book existed supports that,” Anathema said. “She foresaw that the Apocalypse wouldn’t happen and the world would go on. We didn’t change our fates that day, merely embraced them.”

Aziraphale nodded. “But once one realizes that it becomes clear that the Plan _required_ Crowley, or someone very like him, to Fall. Someone who could be cast out without being or becoming a creature consumed by hatred and bitterness. And one has to think: Did he Fall because he deserved to or simply because the Plan required it? How is it _just_ that Crowley Fell and I did not? 

“And now this, and I cannot believe that this was done to him without it being God’s will,” Aziraphale continued, beginning to pace. “I am an angel, it shouldn’t matter that he is my friend and not simply a being who has been wronged. But it remains that he _is_ my friend-”

“So what?” Anathema interrupted. “You’ve become human in your affections. From what I saw that day you’re the only one of your lot who’s capable of love at all. The rest of them would be too busy calculating whether or not it forwarded the Plan to grasp that anyone, stranger _or_ friend, had been misused. Aziraphale, you’re upset because you care about Crowley. Do you honestly think that Gabriel or the rest of them are the slightest bit capable of caring about anyone?”

“For the first time in six thousand years I can imagine storming the gates of heaven,” Aziraphale said quietly. “To demand that they restore him to me. The only thing holding me back is… Knowing I would fail and Crowley would likely die without my support. Why don’t I Fall? What other fate could possibly fit an angel who has lost faith in God’s plan?”


	6. Dreaming

It took slightly upwards of six thousand years on Earth for Aziraphale to develop the habit of sleeping. Crowley had begun exploring the possibility of it about the same time Aziraphale was first experimenting with eating and the demon rapidly developed a such fondness for the activity that he’d slept away most of the nineteenth century. Aziraphale, on the other hand, had never seen the appeal, not when there were new restaurants to be discovered and manuscripts then books to be read- Correction, Aziraphale hadn’t seen the appeal until two years after Crowley had been injured.

He had been stroking his hand over a particularly deep burn on Crowley’s side, trying to encourage it to heal and the rhythmic feel of Crowley’s lungs expanding as the snake lay draped over Aziraphale’s lap had soothed the angel into a doze. Then Aziraphale had found himself sitting across a table from Crowley at the Ritz in the middle of one of their age old arguments. After that Aziraphale added sleeping, dreaming, to his routine. Sometimes it was the Ritz and old familiar arguments, sometimes it was dusty tents set up on the edge of dessert osaises and the same arguments only with edges that hadn’t been worn smooth by time and repetition but it was always Crowley there with him: Sharp tongued, hidden eyes that saw a bit too much, posture that Aziraphale was convinced wasn’t actually possible with a purely human body and fleeting true smiles that Aziraphale had learned to treasure long before he’d been ready to admit how deeply he cared for his demon. Now, when it was only in dreams that Aziraphale could see those smiles or partake in those arguments, he could suddenly see the appeal of sleeping decades away. 

Sometimes he found himself thinking, maybe, if he kept Crowley close enough, he might be able to sustain both of them even in his sleep. After admitting to Anathema that he no longer had faith in God’s plans Aziraphale found the thought crossing his mind more and more. And eventually that stray thought evolved into considering that he could try sleeping for a week or so, to practice, to make sure that his awareness of Crowley was solid enough to ensure that he’d take care of his old friend even in his sleep. And then, once he was certain Crowley wouldn’t be neglected if he indulged in his dreams of the past, then Aziraphale thought about finding someplace entirely secret, curling up with Crowley and going to sleep until Crowley was ready to wake up- And if Crowley didn’t… Well… Aziraphale supposed that if he set himself to wake when Crowley awoke, if that never happened he would simply continue to sleep, indefinitely. He was rather upset with himself for allowing the possibility that Crowley _wouldn’t_ awaken to cross his mind. 

But every time he set himself to act on his thoughts another young person would come through the door of the bookshop radiating loneliness or trepidation and Aziraphale would find himself remembering the quiet joy of providing them a safe space. And occasionally someone needing a genuine miracle would find their way to him. Heaven didn’t send him orders anymore but Aziraphale had always found more job satisfaction in the needed miracles he discovered for himself than in the mandated ones he’d been ordered to perform over the centuries. 

Since Crowley’s injuries Aziraphale had been loathe to leave the bookshop. At first he had, occasionally, allowed Anathema or Adam to persuade him to venture out for a bit, so long as they supplied someone to watch over Crowley in his absence but after Gabriel and Beezlebub’s intrusion such excursions ended. It all made Aziraphale wonder if Adam had a touch of prophecy in him when he’d… renovated… the bookshop decades ago. 

Because of the shop, because of the people who passed through needing the shop, needing an angel in their lives, Aziraphale couldn’t bring himself to sleep away the years. But still, after six thousand years of not sleeping, Aziraphale picked up the habit, spending almost as much time in bed or snoring in the corner of his battered old couch as a human would have needed, indulging in memories of the past. 

Forty years turned into fifty… Sixty… Anathema passed away in her sleep. They laid Newt to rest beside her less than a year later.

Seventy… Eighty... Adam was the last of the Them, the last of the humans who’d faced down both Heaven and Hell and told them to take their apocalypse and shove it. 

“I’m sorry,” Adam said out of the blue one day as he sat in Azirapahle’s backroom sharing a pot of tea.

Azirapahle hummed inquisitively.

“I’m going to die soon,” Adam said. “I could prevent it but I’m not going to. And I’m sorry for that.”

Aziraphale shook his head, “Humans aren’t meant to live forever and you saved us all by being, by choosing to be human. I can hardly begrudge you holding fast to that choice. Crowley and I will be alright.” 

The guilt in Adam’s eyes only grew worse.

Aziraphale sighed. “I was trying to reassure you,” he said. “It hasn’t even been a hundred years, that isn’t so long for Crowley or I.”

Adam’s look said he didn’t buy it and he felt Aziraphale was treating him like he was still the child he’d been back during the Almost-Apocalypse. 

Aziraphale reached out to stroke Crowley’s scales, reflexively transferring some energy as he did. “I am worried, of course,” he admitted. “But there’s nothing more you could do.” He gestured back toward the transformed bookshop. “You have done so much to- to look after me. It gives me reason to keep going.”

“But I’m the only one who has a choice about leaving you behind,” Adam said.

Aziraphale smiled softly. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your company,” he said. “But even if you chose not to follow your friends and family… I, well- Six thousand years Adam, there is no one who could begin to fill the hole Crowley’s absence leaves in my heart. The only faith I have left is that Crowley will return to me, if it is even the slightest bit possible. But I wouldn’t be so selfish as to hold you from the ones whose absence would hollow your heart just to keep me company while I wait.”

A hundred years… Brian and Wensleydale’s great grandsons wrote up the story of the Almost Apocalypse that they’d grown hearing as a bedtime story into a novel. It was the first new book ever sold in Aziraphale’s shop.

A hundred and fifty years… Rumors ran wild both Above and Below. 

Hell had intended to make a spectacle of Crowley’s execution so when it failed to go off as planned everyone knew and a good percentage had seen, and flinched away from, Crowley splashing around in a tub of Holy Water. Hastur coming back around two decades later saying Crowley was dead, or dead-ish anyway, it raised questions. Or to put it another way, no one bought it. Crowley was gone, Hastur, Beezlebub and a handful of others said they saw him dead but everyone saw, or knew someone who saw, Crowley survive immersion in Holy Water, the obvious conclusion was something was being covered up and in a ridiculous, desperate way. Speculation about exactly what they were hiding was all the rage down Below. After a hundred and fifty years most of the rumors settled on believing that, somehow, Crowley had regained his Grace. 

Heaven had no less speculation about Aziraphale but fewer facts to go off of. Gabriel, Uriel, and Sandalphon hadn’t been so eager to make a public production of Aziraphale’s planned execution by hellfire and when it didn’t pan out they’d been even more determined to keep it hushed up. It didn’t stop the rumors. There’d been the Almost-Apocalypse, Heaven and Hell on the brink of war only for it all to fizzle out. Aziraphale had been involved, somehow. Gabriel and the other Archangels hadn’t been happy… And since God neglected to cast Aziraphale out, they had. There was also a whisper that Aziraphale’s disappearance had nothing to do with the Almost-Apocalypse but was on account of him pining over a demon, it was obviously too ludicris to take seriously, the story persisted anyway. 

Two hundred years… The heater in the bookshop malfunctioned one winter’s evening after Aziraphale had dozed off, he woke feeling quite restricted, or possibly constricted… Due to the large python trying to maximize his proximity to Aziraphale’s body heat. “Crowley?” Aziraphale breathed hopefully.

He eventually determined that Crowley wasn’t truly awake. Only his instincts seemed to have come back on line, somewhat. He had no more interest in eating than he’d ever displayed but gravitated toward heat, or more specifically, Aziraphale’s warmth, taking every opportunity to curl up on or around the angel. Aziraphale refused to feel disappointed, choosing to see it as a hopeful sign. 

Three hundred years… There were memos both Above and Below that maybe someone should do something about getting the Apocalypse underway again. But the reality was both sides were too busy with ‘personnel problems’ to take any action. Demons, especially the lower ranks, were failing to report in undreamt of numbers. A very few were found trying to do good deeds in hopes of earning their way back into Heaven, a greater number were discovered trying to pass as human but most weren’t discovered at all. Meanwhile, Above, the Archangels were holding a series of increasingly desperate meetings on the subject of rampant insubordination. Sternly worded letters just didn’t carry the same weight that they used to and if they burned everyone who openly said Gabriel was an unpleasant imbilice with an overinflated sense of self-importance… Well, that would seriously deplete the Host, which was already having its own issue with angels up and leaving, usually in a huff. In a few of those meetings it came up that maybe they should address the root of the problem, as it were, go down to Earth find Aziraphale and make an example of him to get everyone else to fall back into line but then they’d remember what a disaster the last two times they’d tried that had been and well, no one wanted to risk making things worse than they already were. The Apocalypse was quietly regulated to an indefinite hold because, frankly, they had bigger problems. 

During that same century, Aziraphale found Crowley hissing threateningly at a Tradescantia Pendula whose coloration had been fading despite Aziraphale’s best effort at keeping the plant thriving. Aziraphale smiled so broadly and for so long it resulted in an actual muscle ache. This was in spite of the fact that it takes thirty-six fewer muscles to smile than to frown. It doesn’t really matter how many muscles are involved, it’s more whether or not those muscles had been kept in shape. As Crowley’s snake form began to show more and more signs of Crowley-ness, Aziraphale’s smile muscles began getting a much needed work-out.

Three hundred and fifty-six years, two months, and eighteen days after Crowley first went missing he wandered into the bookshop looking bemused. “Angel, you’ve got actual customers. How long have I been asleep?” he asked.

The hug Crowley received in answer nearly knocked him off his feet.


	7. Epilogue

Ten thousand years after the Garden of Eden Crowley and Aziraphale actually went to Alpha Centauri. They weren’t worried about another Apocalypse- 

A thousand years earlier they’d braved their former head-offices to find both Heaven and Hell empty except for a few die-hards. “Reminds me of Shadwell’s Witchfinder Army,” Crowley had laughed. Aziraphale replied, “I do feel a bit sorry for Gabriel, sitting up there all but alone, his memos collecting dust in abandoned offices.”

-They were just curious about what the humans who’d moved off planet were getting up to. So they decided to take a vacation from their beloved Earth to find out.

In every system they visited they found small communities of the missing angels and demons… And an explanation for the number of Earth-like planets that had started popping up in the Universe at about the same time Heaven and Hell were emptying out. It wasn’t, as humans thought, that human technology had simply improved to the point of being able to detect formerly undetectable planets. Those new Earth-like planets hadn’t existed until the exodus of Angel and Demons from the Earth had led to bored, not particularly creative, ethereal and infernal beings who couldn’t think of anything better to do with their time than to make new Earths. 

“So,” Crowley said, swirling a bright blue beverage fermented from fruits grown under the light of a binary star. “Given a few centuries to think on it, the majority of demons and angels figured out that Adam had the right of it: We needed to stop messing around with humans and leave ‘em to their own devices. With nothing much to do on Earth they took off for the stars, made a bunch of new planets worth habitating… And then, once everything was homey, they all settled into a nice stagnation.”

“Generalizing, our species has never been terribly innovative,” Aziraphale said. He studied the vaguely crape-like thing on his plate before committing himself to a bite.

“Species? Shouldn’t that be specieses?” Crowley managed wrap his tongue around the multitude of ‘s’es with an ease no human could duplicate.

“Not at all,” Aziraphale replied serenely. “And not just because that is not a word. You and I are no more a different species than the Athenians and Spartans were a different species. We ended up on opposite sides of a war that happened a very long time ago… And no longer matters in the slightest.”

Crowley let his sunglasses slide down his nose as he smiled, “Sometimes I still forget that I don’t have to worry about going too fast for you anymore.” 

Then he went back to his original thought “But still, a bunch of us leave Earth, go out into the stars and pretty much terraform way more than we’d ever need, seeing as how our population only decreases. And then, a while later, Earth’s getting a bit crowded, humans, clever buggers that they are, figure out how to go intergalactic… And what do you know, there are planets out there all ready for them,” Crowley waved a hand, as if performing a magic trick. “Do you ever think, maybe, even after everything we never saw coming, that it’s still all going according to the Plan?”

“I think,” Aziraphale said, “I think the only plan I care about right now is which planet is next on our list to visit and, once we’ve satisfied our curiosity about how they’re doing out here, returning home. To the bookshop and the plants and your complaints about not being able to drive the Bently.” 

“I don’t see why I can’t,” Crowley immediately complied. “So they made rules against petrol burning automobiles a couple thousand years ago, I never bothered with the stuff anyway. The Bentley never needed it.” 

For a time they drifted into a comfortable silence, enjoying the alien world and it’s fruits. 

“You know, it’s too bad the humans still haven’t figured out how to travel fast enough to get here without generational ships,” Crowley remarked. “They make things too hard on themselves, obeying physics.” 

“Everyone back on Earth does worry so about how their expatriates are doing out here,” Aziraphale said. “Angels were originally messengers,” he added thoughtfully. “Perhaps we should go back to basics, as it were.”

“Come out to the humans now that they are almost all convinced that we’re metaphorical if not flat out mythical?” Crowley snickered, “I don’t have to meet quotas anymore but I can still enjoy a good spot of chaos.”

“I was thinking more of the long term benefits,” Aziraphale said primly.

“That’s the best sort of chaos, Angel,” Crowley grinned toothily. “So we’ve vacationed long enough? Time to shake things up again?”


End file.
